Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals

Online streaming service Aereo says that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, saying an unfavorable ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court was too difficult to overcome. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that Aereo operates like a cable TV company. As a result, the court said the service violates copyright law unless Aereo pays broadcasters licensing fees for offering TV station programs to customers' devices.

Chip-making giant Intel Corp. is still struggling to catch up in mobile computing but says its personal computer business is performing better than expected and its return to revenue growth this year will continue into 2015. Intel's business has suffered as consumers have increasingly turned to smartphones and tablets that mostly use lower-power chips made by other companies.

This version of the bill eliminates the integration ban, and also includes provisions that ban broadcasters from banding together to negotiate retransmission consent deals with MVPDs. The bill heads to the Senate, where passage is expected to be automatic. The President is expected to sign the bill.

The city issued an RFP for the project, called LinkNYC, earlier this year, and today awarded the contract for the work to CityBridge, a team of companies comprised of Qualcomm, Titan, Control Group, and Comark. Titan is an ad company that currently operates most of the city’s pay phones.

Driven by upgrades to 802.11ac and Hotspot 2.0, as well as voice-over-Wi-Fi, the carrier Wi-Fi equipment market is poised to hit $3 billion in 2018. In the first half this year, carrier Wi-Fi equipment revenue reached $286 million, which was a 6 percent from the second half of 2013, according to a report by Infonetics Research.

Super cookies provide a lucrative data-mining opportunity for advertisers. AT&T is giving up the practice because it made it nearly impossible to shield its subscribers' identities online. Verizon Wireless said it is still using this type of tracking.

Cellcom, Bluegrass Cellular and three other regional wireless providers are warning the FCC of the potential havoc Title II reclassification could wreak in the smaller markets they serve. The response from rural and regional carriers is similar to what larger carriers and wireless industry groups have said after President Obama earlier this week urged the FCC to reclassify ISPs as common carriers.

ZCorum has added a feature to its TruVizionbroadband diagnostics application that displays Wi-Fi diagnostics information for subscribers who have CPE with an embedded Wi-Fi access point. Anywhere from 20- to 40 percent of inbound tech support calls are related to the home.

Cox Communications has turned up 500 hotspots across Phoenix with plans to deploy an additional 1,200 access points across the valley by the end of this year. Cox, which recently started offering its 1-Gigabit service in the Phoenix area, has targeted more than 2,500 hotspots in metro Phoenix by the end of next year.

thePlatform has introduced a service for broadcasters that converts linear TV almost immediately into a format that can be used for instant replay in a multi-screen delivery environment. The capability is based in part on Elemental Technology’s Delta JIT packaging system.

AT&T's LTE network will apparently not be taking flight, but things are looking up at GoGo. Runway Girl Network reported Monday that AT&T is abandoning plans that it announced back in April to bring in-flight LTE network service to airlines in 2015.

Spurred on by recent standardization efforts, carrier Wi-Fi revenues in the United States are projected to reach nearly $8 billion by 2019, according to a recent report. The report by ABI Research also said that Cisco and Ruckus Wireless were the early carrier Wi-Fi equipment vendor leaders while other main market players include Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia, and Ericsson.

On Friday AT&T agreed to buy Mexico wireless provider Iusacell for $2.5 billion. The deal nets AT&T Iusacell’s licenses, network assets, retail stores as well as its approximately 8.6 million subscribers. Iusacell operates as both Iusacell and Unefón and maintains a network that covers about 70 percent of Mexico’s population.

"Several large mobile operators have made a gigantic blunder, by ignoring the opportunity to deploy Wi-Fi or utilize Hotspot 2.0 – so cable operators and other service providers are jumping on the opportunity." The growth in public Wi-Fi installations will far outstrip the deployment of small cells by telcos.

In the single largest deployment in the company’s history, Boingo Wireless has installed 25,000 hotspots across Marine, Army and Air Force bases. All told, Boingo's Wi-Fi service, which is called Boingo Broadband, now covers 21 United States military bases across the globe.

Dish Network is “cautiously optimistic” that the fixed-mobile broadband trials it’s currently running with Sprint and nTelos will turn into a “real business.” Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen said those trials and other opportunities have the satellite-TV provider well-positioned for growth.

Dish Network reported a modest uptick in third quarter revenue, less than half the profit, a modest decline in subscribership for its video service, and a minimal increase for broadband. With the video market is saturated, the company is widely seen as treading water.

Google has added a triple shot of Wi-Fi speed to a Starbucks store in Kansas City now that the store has been connected directly to the Google Fiber network. The Starbucks located at the corner of 41St and Main Street in Kansas City was the first out of the gates to tap into Google’s fiber network.

Carnival said will offer a long-range, broadband wireless Internet network on all of its 101 ships across nine cruise line brands. The cruise ship company says WiFi@Sea will use a combination of land-based antennas installed along cruise routes, Wi-Fi from a port connection, and advanced satellites to offer onboard Internet.

Can Old Faithful compete with Netflix? The prospect of streaming wireless service deep inside Yellowstone National Park is re-igniting the debate over whether there should be any place off limits to technology. Park officials are in preliminary discussions with CenturyLink about installing a $34 million fiber-optic line through neighboring Grand Teton National Park and into Yellowstone.

Fabless semiconductor company Peraso Technologies has closed a $20 million funding round. The company's chipsets are designed for products that will support the 60 GHz IEEE 802.11ad specification, which supports gigabit wireless connectivity for wireless backhaul, small cell base stations, file transfer, docking stations and other applications.

People who subscribe to Time Warner Cable (TWC) VoIP can now use their phone service anywhere in the world they have access to a Wi-Fi signal. TWC has launched an app, called Phone 2 Go, that lets its Home Phone customers take their service on-the-go at no additional cost.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple's new mobile payment system had over 1 million activations in the first three days after it became available, and is now more widely used than any competing payment system. While Apple has partnered with major banks and large retail chains including Macy's Inc., Walgreen Co. and McDonald's Corp., critics have noted that it's not accepted by a number of other large chains.

Amazon has jumped into the TV stick arena to compete against similar devices from the likes of Google’s Chromecast and Roku. This morning Amazon announced its Fire TV Stick, which is available to existing and new Amazon Prime customers for $19 over the next two days, or $39 as a standalone. Amazon is currently taking preorders for the Fire Stick with shipping slated for Nov. 19.

Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (Shentel) is helping support the 2014 Create West Virginia Conference by offering free Wi-Fi in Glenville, W.Va. Shentel’s free Wi-Fi offer started on Oct. 15 and is slated to run through the rest of the month.